Month: May 2008

“Microsoft seems to be fighting a losing public relations battle for Vista, as companies continue to criticize the latest Windows operating system. In an interview with InformationWeek, Symantec’s chief operating officer Enrique Salem said his customers in the enterprise sector are sticking with the older operating system. This apparently is resulting in lost sales for the company and other third-party providers, he laments. While the first service pack for Vista was intended to drum up interest in the OS, Salem has seen no evidence of an increase in adoption. He added that the company is looking towards Windows 7 and is already working on applications for that operating system, due out in 2010.”

“Moving right along according to plan, the first release candidate of Firefox 3.0 appeared this morning among Mozilla’s beta and candidate downloads. BetaNews has obtained the link, and RC1 is downloadable now. On previous occasions during this testing cycle, what appeared to be public betas of Firefox 3 showed up in just the right place on Mozilla’s servers, at just the right time, but ended up being internal builds of the product. BetaNews is testing this RC1 download now, and will have more news about it later this afternoon. As best as we can tell, it’s the genuine article. As expected, most of the plug-ins recently upgraded for usability with Beta 5 were operable in this version, though our plug-in to switch rendering engines with Internet Explorer at will, is functional. The ‘About’ screen clearly registered the product as ‘Firefox 3.0’ instead of ‘Firefox 3.0b5.’ And after installation, the browser attempted to load a ‘What’s new in 3.0’ page that does not yet exist. In the early going, we notice one obvious new addition: A link marked ‘Most Visited’ appears next to the ‘Smart Bookmarks’ button in the Links toolbar, which itself was an addition that cropped up, we believe, in Beta 3. Clicking on this button brings up a list of URLs that appear to be the top 10 members of the current History buffer. The default skin looks ever-so-slightly tweaked, with more space between the new ‘Back’ and ‘Forward’ rocker-switch-looking contraption and the ‘Reload current page’ button. Some pixels appear to have been cropped from the Address bar to make room.”

The liveusb-creator is a cross-platform tool for easily installing live operating systems on to USB flash drives.

Features

Supports downloading various Fedora releases, including Fedora 9!

Persistent overlay creation (only works with Fedora 9 right now). This lets you to allocate extra space on your USB stick, allowing you to save files and make modifications to your live operating system that will persist after you reboot. This essentially lets you carry your own personalized Fedora with you at all times

SHA1 checksum verification of known releases, to ensure that you’ve downloaded the correct bits

How cool is that? And, it works for other OSes as well! Play to your heart’s content!

“Verizon Wireless said on Wednesday that it was putting its weight behind a Linux-based operating system that rivals Google Inc.’s ( GOOG) own Android offering. Wireless carriers are increasingly looking to open standard software for their phones because they reduce manufacturing costs and make it easier for the development community to independently create new services and programs. Verizon Wireless said it will use a standard called LiMo, and expects it to eventually be the preferred operating system for its phones. The carrier – jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) and Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) – plans to have phones using the LiMo operating system by 2009, according to Kyle Malady, vice president of networks. While LiMo has gotten less press than Android, it is further along the development process, with 18 handsets from eight different companies in the market. The wide number of development partners in the LiMo Foundation and the more open nature of the group attracted Verizon Wireless, Malady said.”

“Offering a device for individuals to keep handy just in case a ‘must record’ moment happens (‘Don’t Taze Me, Bro’ moments), Creative has unveiled its VF0570-P Vado Pocket Video Camcorder. With 2 GB of memory, and 640 x 480 VGA MPEG4 videos recording at 30 fps, Creative’s Vado has specs conspicuously similar to PureVideo’s 2 GB Flip Video. The main difference between the two is the price. The 2 GB flip carries with it an MSRP of $149.99, while the Vado shaves the price down to $99.99. Complete with two AA batteries, the unit only weighs 84 grams and claims to be able to record for 2 hours in an even further reduced quality. Like the Flip, there is a built in USB connector, a 2″ LCD screen, and an A/V out port. Though Creative and Pure both bill their devices as ‘camcorders,’ the quality offered is only marginally better than the capture quality on better mobile phones. Furthermore, a developing trend among point and shoot still cameras is the addition of HD video capture. Panasonic, Samsung, Kodak, and Canon all offer far superior video capture quality in a comparably-sized unit for only a fraction more money.”

So, we are doomed. Global warming will be our end. But, wait! Now, there’s big news! We are now facing Global Cooling! Wow! And, to think, I was about ready to get a mega-powered air conditioner to stay cool… now, I will need fur coats and mukluks! Come on, guys… make up your mind!

The point is, it is all hooey! Just doomsday stuff to part us from our green (the kind that really counts, our money!)

“Cold Reception – Tuesday we told you about several areas around the planet experiencing record cold and snowpack â€” in the face of all the predictions of global warming. Now there is word that all four major global temperature tracking outlets have released data showing that temperatures have dropped significantly over the last year. California meteorologist Anthony Watts says the amount of cooling ranges from 65-hundredths of a degree Centigrade to 75-hundreds of a degree. That is said to be a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. It is reportedly the single fastest temperature change ever recorded â€” up or down. Some scientists contend the cooling is the result of reduced solar activity â€” which they say is a larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases.”

“The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce that the public beta release of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now available. This beta release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and evaluate the next major version of OpenOffice.org, but is not recommended for production use at this stage. If you are a regular user of OpenOffice.org, here’s a great opportunity to help us make the next release the best ever.

What’s new in OpenOffice.org 3.0?

The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new ‘Start Centre’, new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. A closer look shows that 3.0 has a myriad of new features. Notable Calc improvements include a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress. Behind the scenes, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.). OpenOffice.org 3.0 will be the first version to run on Mac OS X without X11, with the look and feel of any other Aqua application. It introduces partial VBA support to this platform. In addition, OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications.”

This Week’s Dr. Bill.TV Netcast!

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